deadlock ritualists ranked by how pleasant they would be on the subway
as decided by me (chud noob) and my best friend (gigachad master deadlock player training me)
details why under
NOTABLE NYC SUBWAY ENCOUNTER:
everyone who i feel would be a weird/interesting/not negative experience on the subway. ivy is basically a small town celebrity, whenever she feels like taking the subway she prob gets recognized and spoken to in a friendly manner. celeste would prob perform on the subway for fun, and she's good too so she'd get lots of tips. if paige isn't evangelizing in the station she's prob doing her cool magic in the car. rem is a cute precocious kid, vic infernus and shiv are all in the same category of "guy with aura who you stare at for too long cause u can't believe he's real". viscous is viscous.
TALKS TO YOU (POSITIVE)
i feel like mirage and dynamo would both be super chatty and friendly, dynamo is just all-around asking you abt ur life, telling u abt his, etc, while mirage starts the convo by asking for directions and then keeps it going by asking for restaurant and entertainment recs. not much to say other than they're nice!
JUST A NORMAL JOE GOING TO WORK
first four i probably wouldn't even blink at seeing at the subway. pocket looks normal. graves is just a goth kid. holliday is a tourist. grey talon is extremely cool looking but otherwise quiet and contemplative. haze i'm assuming that in her civvie life she takes the subway like every other person.
TALKS TO YOU (YOU MOVE AWAY)
you're sitting down on the corner seat in the subway. some people are standing but there's still seats available. train stops, the biggest fucking guy you've seen all week steps in and sits RIGHT next to you. ULTRA MEGA MANSPREAD. pushes you to the corner. "you know," he starts, speaking to no one in particular, "i'm actually a pretty big deal around here. you've probably heard of me. they call me... The Lash." this dude, he KEEPS FUCKING TALKING. HE DOES NOT SHUT UP. you get up. you move to leave. "tch. i get it. you're not ready for The Lash." you switch to the other train car.
it's 2am. you just got off the night shift. shadows jump out at you and nothing feels safe. you got one white knuckled grip on your bag and the other in your pocket. you get to the subway, get inside the train, and for a second, you almost relax. in that moment of relaxation, you blink. and in that split second, a figure sits in front of you. you didn't even see anything move. it's just there. the smell of sulfur fills the train car. "you'd be better off without that knife in your pocket," the voice drones at you from behind its mask, like a cage on its face. "in these streets, a gun would be of better use." another blink, and he's gone. you fucking book it home.
SLEEPING IN THE TRAIN CAR (BUMMINGLY)
NEWS FLASH: BROKE BITCHES GOT DRUNK LAST NIGHT AND DIDN'T MAKE IT HOME!!!!!!!!!!! BEER BOTTLES SURROUND THEIR LIFELESS SMELLY BODIES!!!!!!!!!!!
otherwise vyper would be in talks to you (you move away) and silver would be in average joe.
SEES TRAIN CAR PULL INTO THE STATION. GOES INTO THE OTHER CAR.
you need to understand that venator looks racist to me. who would willingly share a subway car with this man. alternatively, seven would also be here if i wasn't so sure he'd be good at hiding himself.
EAR GROWS 3 SIZES TO LISTEN TO THEIR ARGUMENT
yes bro. delicious. alternatively, mina & pocket (would never happen) and graves & apollo (actually possible but just petty teenage drama)
TAKING UP TOO MUCH SPACE
organized by how purposefully they're taking up space, with abrams being "he can't help it" to billy being "manspreading that much cannot be comfortable." kelvin gets a weighted ranking not because he is taking that much space on purpose, but because he would be so uncomfortable to sit next. cold as fuck BIG as fuck AND he probably stinks. HELL naw. mcginnis is shebagging the entire chair she's sitting on with all her bots. asshole. if i was sitting next to billy i would kill him.
WOULDN'T BE CAUGHT DEAD ON THE SUBWAY.
with a few exceptions! apollo would go to prove he isn't stuck-up (probably to graves), wraith would go on occasion to shmooze with people or make bets, and yamato would walk in, announce that this is her train car now in japanese, much to the confusion of onlookers, and then proceeds to take over the L train for one day. first three would literally choke on glass before stepping foot into public transportation.
FUCK YOU USING THE SUBWAY FOR
fuck are you using the subway for. YOU have magic doors, YOU can fly, YOU LITERALLY HAVE TUNNELS TO GET ANYWHERE IN THE CITY, and YOU are LITERALLY PART OF A WORLD CLASS THIEVES' GUILD.
COP (EVIL)
he's gonna get at least 3 people for hopping the turnstile and get at least one for no reason. everyone switches cars when they see him get in. you think venator looks racist? i KNOW this guy's racist.
that poll going around of the guy who thought "people only eat tofu as a bit because they're deranged vegans" or whatever really crystalizes something that i have never been able to precisely say - which is "a nonzero fraction of people who start picky-eater discourse just happen to precisely hate those foods which are not from north america and refuse to introspect on this whatsoever"
In contrast some people say "there aren't any picky eaters in Asia 🙄" but this is laughably untrue. I have a cousin in India who refused until his 20s to eat anything in a sauce. as you can imagine in India this was difficult. he basically had to pick things out of curry and wipe them dry
Due to a recent accident in the labs, the boys downstairs have found a way to turn men into women. Amazing breakthrough, and we wish you all luck on your transition. And your job hunt. You’re all fired. Sorry boys, nothing against you. We just don’t need women around here trying to clean up the lab while the men are trying to do real work. Cave out.
'minion' -too closely associated with those yellow things
'goon' -linguistic drift gave her a new meaning. i hope her new life is good for her. i miss her.
'henchman' -too gendered. can be shortened to 'hench' in a pinch, but lacks punch.
'servant' -too domestic to apply to all those who serve evil.
'underling, subordinate' -this one only works if they get off on being beneath you and/or you don't properly pay your workers.
'associate' -this one's good for grizzled mercenaries or lone agents but doesn't work good for broad swathes of an organization.
'slave' -same as underling but more intense. really fun for some of the group. unsavory for others in a way that limits the scope of the thing.
'thrall' -only really applies if you're brainwashing them and that's not something i've learned how to do en masse yet
'flunky, toady, stooge, lackey' -these are just insulting, and that isn't conducive to a healthy work environment. imagine going to work and your job title is 'stooge'.
'acolyte' -works for those that worship you, but again. lacks the scope.
'supporter, follower' -unspecific and vague
'assistant, helper, aide' -not sinister at all. just means you're doing things for me. swagless in this manner. could be good if used to describe someone who's so clearly more that as a way to emphasize their obedience via understatement, but that's only useful for a few members of the organization. and even then, 'associate' works better.
'cohort' -untested in the field. suggests an equal footing in the affair, ideal for post-structuralist evil organizations with a bottom-up power structure that's held in the hands of the evil workers themselves. perhaps we'll explore it together?
may I suggest: 'grunt' – time-tested by crime bosses with a variety of goals and organizational mandates. implies a subservient position with none of the innate baggage of lackey et al.
alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
It's spring now which means the kids in my city have started drawing hopscotches on the sidewalk and as a rule I do every hopscotch I see because 1. Use it or lose it (ability to scotch) and 2. If a child got down on the hardscrabble streets of Boston Massachusetts to draw a scotch the least I can do is use it, but in doing the hopscotches, I've learned that about 50% of them are the typical 8-10 step scotch and the other 50% are. Somewhat avant-garde. And of course I'm not vetting the entire scotch before I start it so sometimes it's like haha 8 steps woo! Childlike whimsy! And sometimes they're 20 steps or 30 or they've got a section with three squares instead of two where you have to do a little Charleston to step on all three, or, memorably, FORTY one foot squares. A full BLOCK of jumping on one foot but I'm no quitter so once I've started Jigsaw Junior's fuckin hopscotch gauntlet I'm there til the end just a daily pot smoker in her thirties jumping kasa-obake style through an affluent suburb while some little proto-kennedy watches from his bedroom window rubbing his sadistic little third grade hands together and cackling. It's amazing. I love spring.
Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???
for real though, those DO NOT WATCH OR YOU'LL CORRUPT YOUR CHILDREN lists put out by conservative christian family groups is where I find all the stellar tv shows. Like, shit I didn't know half of those existed, thanks for finding them for me, gonna go watch 30 hours of gay tv now!
For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.
So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?
Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?
Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.
Same as the journalists describing Black Rock City as all naked. Same as the right-wing religious culture warriors describing television as entirely mixed-race and gender non-conforming. Not because it's even vaguely true, we know that, but because they haven't gotten over their discomfort over the last one by the time the next one comes along. The anger, not the stimulus, is the part that's continuous, so their mind lies to them that it's "all" the thing they can't get over.
Similar effect for the presence/proportion of women in things, by the way: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm
That's literally the solution. Stop giving fuckheads concerned with what the white cis het median control of anything, and you'd be able to make some very broad changes.
janainaart
theartofmadeline
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
2087
